A long walk and grooming with a well-mannered dog is a Zen experience that leaves you refreshed and in a creative frame of mind.

The snow did not even whisper its way to earth, but seemed to salt the night with silence.

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel.

we must seize life because we never know how much of it remains for us, that faith is the antidote to despair and that laughter is the music of faith.

I am my own worst enemy. This, more than any other trait, proves my fundamental humanity.

I've since discovered that many human beings need no supernatural mentoring to commit acts of savagery; some people are devils in their own right, their telltale horns having grown inward to facilitate their disguise.

If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.